Friday Will Be Very Different At Tippecanoe Valley
August 17, 2016 at 4:13 p.m.
By Roger Grossman-
The story lines are thick, but there is one story that will stand out above the others.
It’s fair to say that Friday’s football game at Tippecanoe Valley will look very different than any other ever played there.
For 40 years, the home fans have been filing into the east bleachers to watch their beloved Vikings take on the opposition. The clock and scoreboard operators, broadcasters and print media members worked from the press box that was mounted just above the top row. The assistant coaches and video camera operators crawled up a ladder on the press box’s outside wall to their place on its roof.
Not anymore.
When Valley fans come to watch, the media come to report and coaches come to coach in Friday’s opener against Culver Academy, they will do it from the west side of the field.
The fans will watch from brand new bleachers that have been erected in the last few weeks. It means that the supporters of the home side will no longer stare into the sun for the first half of the first two home games of the season.
At the top of those bleachers will be a brand new, multi-level press box with plenty of room for game workers, the media, and coaches from both teams. It includes its own staircase, and will also have windows on to the backside that will allow the press box to be used for the soccer field that will play host to the new Valley soccer program.
As someone who broadcast games for nine years in the old press box, I won’t miss it. I’m sure it was great when it was built in the mid-1970s, but it was not big enough, unsafe and hard to see the field and scoreboard from.
The first game on the newly configured football field at Valley should be a momentus occasion, and it will be – sort of.
The new press box comes courtesy of a gift from the family of former Valley coach Scott Bibler.
Bibler, another former Valley football coach Charlie Smith, Smith’s son Scott, and sprint car racing legend Tony Elliott were killed when their plane crashed on its way to the Notre Dame vs Clemson game in Oct.
WRSW’s Rita Price and Tim Keffaber broke the news to listeners of their broadcast during the postgame show that night. The always unshakable Keffaber couldn’t form the words, but Rita did – and I frankly don’t know how.
The funerals followed gatherings where thousands attended to pay their final respects, to show support for the families, and to try to make sense of it all.
Most of us have not had any success with that last part.
Stephanie Bibler and her daughters gave money to the school for the purpose of building a new press box for the football field. Those game workers, media members and coaches were not just people who Scott Bibler saw on Friday nights four or five times a year. They were his friends. Good friends. Close friends. He knew them well and they knew him well. Their names: Greg, Terry, Chris, Scott, Tim, Rita – and there are and have been dozens of others.
Many of them are my friends too.
And as much as they’ll all love working in the beautiful new pressbox, I’m sure they’d all prefer that Scott Bibler come up and join them Friday for one of Terry’s atomic fire dogs in the old one.
But that just isn’t going to happen.
At halftime Friday, there will be a dedication ceremony for the changes. I don’t predict what will happen at high school sporting events, but I feel quite confident in saying that there won’t be too many dry eyes during that dedication.
That includes mine, which will be in Columbia City with the Warsaw Tigers.
I wrote about this generous gift when it was first announced. I told you then that I planned to go down to Tippecanoe Valley and spend some time in that new press box – a moment in peaceful serenity where no game or broadcast could interfere. I did that this morning. It was more powerful than I could have imagined.
I still don’t see why what happened last October happened.
But people attending Friday will see the game more clearly because of it, and because of the wisdom of a woman who lost her beloved husband but used the worst moment of her life to make Friday a great day for Tippecanoe Valley.
The story lines are thick, but there is one story that will stand out above the others.
It’s fair to say that Friday’s football game at Tippecanoe Valley will look very different than any other ever played there.
For 40 years, the home fans have been filing into the east bleachers to watch their beloved Vikings take on the opposition. The clock and scoreboard operators, broadcasters and print media members worked from the press box that was mounted just above the top row. The assistant coaches and video camera operators crawled up a ladder on the press box’s outside wall to their place on its roof.
Not anymore.
When Valley fans come to watch, the media come to report and coaches come to coach in Friday’s opener against Culver Academy, they will do it from the west side of the field.
The fans will watch from brand new bleachers that have been erected in the last few weeks. It means that the supporters of the home side will no longer stare into the sun for the first half of the first two home games of the season.
At the top of those bleachers will be a brand new, multi-level press box with plenty of room for game workers, the media, and coaches from both teams. It includes its own staircase, and will also have windows on to the backside that will allow the press box to be used for the soccer field that will play host to the new Valley soccer program.
As someone who broadcast games for nine years in the old press box, I won’t miss it. I’m sure it was great when it was built in the mid-1970s, but it was not big enough, unsafe and hard to see the field and scoreboard from.
The first game on the newly configured football field at Valley should be a momentus occasion, and it will be – sort of.
The new press box comes courtesy of a gift from the family of former Valley coach Scott Bibler.
Bibler, another former Valley football coach Charlie Smith, Smith’s son Scott, and sprint car racing legend Tony Elliott were killed when their plane crashed on its way to the Notre Dame vs Clemson game in Oct.
WRSW’s Rita Price and Tim Keffaber broke the news to listeners of their broadcast during the postgame show that night. The always unshakable Keffaber couldn’t form the words, but Rita did – and I frankly don’t know how.
The funerals followed gatherings where thousands attended to pay their final respects, to show support for the families, and to try to make sense of it all.
Most of us have not had any success with that last part.
Stephanie Bibler and her daughters gave money to the school for the purpose of building a new press box for the football field. Those game workers, media members and coaches were not just people who Scott Bibler saw on Friday nights four or five times a year. They were his friends. Good friends. Close friends. He knew them well and they knew him well. Their names: Greg, Terry, Chris, Scott, Tim, Rita – and there are and have been dozens of others.
Many of them are my friends too.
And as much as they’ll all love working in the beautiful new pressbox, I’m sure they’d all prefer that Scott Bibler come up and join them Friday for one of Terry’s atomic fire dogs in the old one.
But that just isn’t going to happen.
At halftime Friday, there will be a dedication ceremony for the changes. I don’t predict what will happen at high school sporting events, but I feel quite confident in saying that there won’t be too many dry eyes during that dedication.
That includes mine, which will be in Columbia City with the Warsaw Tigers.
I wrote about this generous gift when it was first announced. I told you then that I planned to go down to Tippecanoe Valley and spend some time in that new press box – a moment in peaceful serenity where no game or broadcast could interfere. I did that this morning. It was more powerful than I could have imagined.
I still don’t see why what happened last October happened.
But people attending Friday will see the game more clearly because of it, and because of the wisdom of a woman who lost her beloved husband but used the worst moment of her life to make Friday a great day for Tippecanoe Valley.
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